Howard Kurtz really is one sorry excuse for a “media critic.” After falling in line with the rest of crowd, lecturing Minnesota Democrats on how to hold a proper memorial service for a politician, Kurtz, Man of Principle, yesterday weighed in on the media for its failure to cover Walter Mondale’s political views and its purported over-emphasis on the latest polls. “[W]hen is someone going to do a tough piece on Mondale’s record, as opposed to all this horse-race analysis?”

When would they have had time? Everyone’s too busy falling all over each other playing Emily Post. And since when have “issues” become more important to the media than polls? Enough with the grandstanding, Howie. Anyway, isn’t that your phone ringing? Better answer it. It’s probably Marc Racicot again.

Mystic Peggy Noonan, channeling the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), tells us there are “no politics” in . . . heaven? I think she means heaven, but she doesn’t actually use the word. I figured there wouldn’t be politics up there, but who would have guessed they write memos? Lord, have mercy on this woman.

“What’s on Tina Brown’s mind?” Good God, who cares?

Charles Krauthammer, who hasn’t written a decent column since “Not Guilty, Insane” (March 21), about Andrea Yates -- a column that, incidentally, Krauthammer wrote while wearing his psychiatrist hat, the not-made-of-tin-foil hat he actually earned -- today frets, for the third time in four weeks, that the Bush administration might not be serious about waging war on Iraq. Imagine that. The Bush administration not serious about something.

Setting the bar remarkably low, New York Sun managing editor Ira Stoll tells the Daily News, “I’m pretty happy with the way things are going.”